Friday, July 22, 2011

House SpeakerJohn Boehner called President Obama Friday to inform him that he is pulling out of talks with him on raising the nation's legal limit to borrow money, just days before an Aug. 2 deadline when the government can no longer pay all its bills and faces its first-ever possible default.

Boehner sent a letter to lawmakers saying, "In the end, we couldn't connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country."

Mix up a Martooni or two or a Gin and Tonic, and read and weep over the fecklessness of our political betters. As I have said before, I am worried about what the heck is going on and do not know anyone who is not.

The 70-Million-Check Constituency. It's about the delusion that "money happens." Money does not "happen" without people busting their asses in profitable work.

How to Contain the European Debt Crisis: Giavazzi and Kashyap. It is not a joke: the credit cards are at the limit, and the creditors are rightly concerned. If the big creditors blow up, we all blow up with them. Debtor nations are like suicide bombers, but at some point there is not enough money in the world to pay them off.

If Congress and President Obama, as well as the candidates who would like to succeed the president in 2013, maintain their silence, people should at least understand that the lousy jobs numbers are no mystery. They are the result of a policy that Washington has willfully chosen. As the Fed notes, the cost of this policy isn’t measured in dollars but in something more precious: time. Washington’s refusal to confront the debt problem is costing millions the most productive years of their lives.

That part is heart-breaking. But if you were or are an employer, would you be hiring now? We in CT are firing, not hiring, and not happy about it at all.

Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.

Bertrand Russell, who met Lenin in 1920, came away with a different impression:

"When I met Lenin … my most vivid impressions were of bigotry and Mongolian cruelty. When I put a question to him about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, ‘and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree—ha ha ha!’ His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold."

I think Stove is right, though—prescient even—about the ultimate destination of the welfare state: “We also know that the inherent tendency of the welfare state is to increase poverty; that ‘welfare’ still continues every year to absorb a greater proportion of our nations’ wealth and population; and that there is no social force in sight capable of stopping that process.”

Captain America is an incredible war movie that just happens to star a superhero

Captain America is a rousing, massively entertaining movie that's as much an old-school, earnest World War II epic as it is a modern superhero action movie. It also features a showstopping song-and-dance number and moments of surprising poignancy and emotion.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Norway came under a co-ordinated double attack today in what is being described as the worst atrocity it has faced since the Second World War. Terrorists are believed to be responsible for a massive car blast at a government office block in the capital Oslo and a man disguised as a police officer opened fire on an island hosting a youth summer camp. At least thirty people were killed - at least seven in Oslo and dozens on Utoya Island, 50 miles north of the capital - where the prime minister Jens Stoltenberg had been due to attend the youth Labour Party event.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.

1. If a previous president had doubled the national debt which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in just one year, would you have approved?

2. If a previous president had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

3. If a previous president would have spent nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus and guaranteed unemployment would not exceed 8%, would you have called him a liar?

4. If a previous president would have played golf for thirteen weekends in a row leaving it up to congressional leaders to deal with the greatest financial crisis since the great depression, would you have considered him disengaged and out of touch?

5. If a previous president had criticized a state law that he admitted to never even reading, would you have thought him an ignoramus?

“A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad), issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces’ presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad.”

Senate Votes to Set Aside 'Cut, Cap and Balance' Plan Proposed by House GOP

The Senate on Friday voted to "table," or kill, a House Republican proposal to "cut, cap and balance" the budget that Majority Leader Harry Reid called the single worst piece of legislation ever to hit the Senate floor.

The House Republican "Cut, Cap and Balance" (measure) is now over. It's done, dead," Reid said after the 51-46 vote.

"The Democrat-led Senate's failure to both produce a budget and pass the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011 underscores the Democrats' irresponsible commitment to the status quo," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement after voting for the bill. "While the president and Senator Reid refuse to produce a plan to deal with our debt crisis, Republicans will keep working to meet the nation’s fiscal challenges."

The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government's first-ever audit of the central bank.

Last year, the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy was $14.5 trillion.

Of the $16.1 trillion loaned out, $3.08 trillion went to financial institutions in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) analysis shows.

Norwegian police were responding Friday to a shooting at a youth camp reportedly run by the ruling Labor Party, where authorities say at least four people were shot by a gunman dressed in a police uniform. The gunman was in custody. The shooting is reportedly connected to a car-bombing that tore through government buildings in Oslo, including the prime minister's office, in the nation's worst attack since World War II.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.) said on the House floor last night that if the balanced budget amendment Republicans are supporting is ratified and included in the Constitution it would make it “virtually impossible” to raise taxes.

Powerful explosions shook central Oslo on Friday afternoon, blowing out the windows of several government buildings, including one housing the office of the Norwegian prime minister. The state television broadcaster, citing the police, said seven people were killed and at least 15 injured; a spokeswoman for the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said he was “safe and not hurt.”

A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack.

Rather than originating from decades ago, these pictures were taken last week in Iran, where the death penalty is still publicly used to this day. After the ties are secured, the buses on which the men stand are driven away, leaving the hastily-convicted criminals hanging in front of crowds of onlookers, many of whom are children.

Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.

During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother’s fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage.

In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses.

But in “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.

So it is a lie but it’s OK to lie if you need to sell a point:

On Wednesday, in response to repeated requests for comment that The Times first made in mid-June, shortly after the book’s release, a White House spokesman chose not to dispute either Ms. Scott’s account or Mr. Obama’s memory, while arguing that Mr. Obama’s broader point remained salient.

Those terrible, heartless corporations have been a theme of the Obama presidency. He has been trying to structure American brains around that idea, so he can win acceptance of policies that most Americans don’t want, and that story of his personal agony played an important role in pushing through an immense federal power.

Popular TV Shows Teach Children Fame Is Most Important Value, Psychologists Report; Being Kind to Others Fell Dramatically in Importance Over 10 Years

ScienceDaily (July 11, 2011) — Fame is the No. 1 value emphasized by television shows popular with 9- to 11-year-olds, a dramatic change over the past 10 years, UCLA psychologists report in a new study.

Psychologists report that fame is the No. 1 value emphasized by television shows popular with 9-11 year-olds -- a dramatic change in 10 years.